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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (52424)	8/20/1998 2:13:00 PM
From: The Phoenix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

What is this all about...are you serious?

To: Narotham Reddy who wrote (52424)	8/20/1998 3:17:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Macro good news. Net service providers win phone-fee ruling mercurycenter.com Posted at 9:42 p.m. PDT Wednesday, August 19, 1998 Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON -- In a ruling that could help lower phone and Internet access costs for consumers and businesses, a federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld federal regulations that exempt America Online Inc. and other Internet service providers from paying local phone companies when their customers dial up to go online. The ruling by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis also preserves Federal Communications Commission rules aimed at slashing billions of dollars in charges from the access fees that long-distance carriers such as AT&T Corp. and MCI Communications Corp. pay local phone companies to connect toll calls. The decision means tens of millions of Web surfers can continue to enjoy flat-rate Internet service and not have to worry about per-minute charges. It also sets the stage for more reductions in the long-distance costs for business and residential phone users, because access fees make up about 5 percent to 8 percent of telephone toll charges. Finally, the ruling may fuel greater interest in routing long-distance phone calls via the Internet, because access fees aren't currently imposed on such calls. Though the ruling stopped short of adopting the long-distance industry's view that access charges are still $10 billion too high and should be lowered to equal the cost of connecting long-distance calls, government and industry officials hailed the decision. ''This is a big victory for Internet users and local phone subscribers,'' said Jack Nadler, a Washington communications lawyer who represented the Internet Access Coalition, a watchdog group in the case. ''What was at stake here was the whole pricing structure of the telephone network.'' ''We are very pleased that the court found the FCC has the ability to fashion appropriate rules to ease the transition for consumers from monopoly to competitive markets,'' FCC Chairman William E. Kennard said in a statement. The decision is a setback for GTE Corp. and the five regional Bell telephone companies, which have filed more than two dozen lawsuits in state and federal courts challenging various FCC local-phone reforms. But some critics say long-distance carriers may choose to pocket the $1.7 billion reduction in access fees the FCC has already ordered, instead of further slashing long-distance rates, which have already fallen more than 40 percent over the last decade. c1997 - 1998 Mercury Center. The information you receive online from Mercury Center is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright-protected material.